Sunday Reading 12 February 2017
Welcome back to Sunday reading.
From the Devonport Ferry. If your commute has tourists taking selfies on it then I’d say it’s probably pretty good:
Here is a clipping from yesterday’s Herald Commercial Property section. It neatly encapsulates the value of sorting out planning restrictions [Unitary Plan] and making high quality Transit investments [City Rail Link], naturally, given the context, through a property value lens: I wouldn’t get too hung up on the salesman’s boosterism in the second paragraph, as the main point is that the only way for tatty low value (in the broadest sense) parts of the city, like the current low rise commercial city fringe, to attract investment and therefore improvement is through value uplift.…
31 Comments 50 Years of waiting for an Auckland Rapid Transit system.
My father, Ian Reynolds 1922-2005, was an architect (as was my mother). He was also a what was then called a Town and Country Planner. After returning from working in England after the war he spent the rest of his career as partner in a big multidisciplinary practice in Auckland (missing the city of his youth: Wellington.…
Guest Post: Locomotion
This is a guest post by Wellington commenter Guy Marriage
Do the locomotion with me.
I am surprised and a little disappointed that there has not been much discussion here over KiwiRail’s decision to axe the electric locomotives on the main trunk line.…
Quay St: Oh Yeah
Off-road cycle routes are great, but I love on-street ones even more, as they are real city changers.
Both of course are required and required to be interconnected, but for today, here’s a celebration of the Quay St on-street cycle lanes, an important step towards a network:
Looking forward to this route being connected to the Nelson St on-street cyclelanes, the SkyPath, and Tamaki Drive.…
Ka mua, ka muri: Looking back in order to move forward
‘They always say time changes everything, but actually you have change them yourself’ -Andy Warhol
Ka mua, ka muri is a Māori proverb that expresses a great truth around a simple image. The image is of a person walking backwards into the future.…
City Centre Streets for the 21st Century
Santiago de Chile is home to some 6m+ souls, its origins date back to the 16th Century, and it has south American largest, and still expanding, Metro system. But, like almost all cities coming out of the 20th Century, its city centre streets have been allowed to be dominated by vehicles, with all of the disbenefits this brings.…
The Ideology of Traffic
Sometimes we come across something that is so perfect and so timely that it just needs repeating as it is. This is one of those times. The following post by Charles Marohn is lifted in its entirety from StrongTowns.org The Ideology of Traffic by Charles Marohn The greatest accomplishment of any ideology is to not be considered an ideology; to be a belief system that is not considered a belief system.…
Photo of the Day: Our Out of Balance Centre City Streets
Vincent and Pitt, Thursday 5:49 pm. Every corner occupied with people wanting to cross, including eight on this silly little delight of a ‘pedestrian refuge’, or nine if you include me, as I stepped back into the vehicle priority slip lane to take the shot, including at least one genuine princess.…
Tweet of the Day: 21st Century City
Not sufficient, but essential: The provision of a high quality spatially efficient Rapid Transit Network in a city may not guarantee city quality and a flourishing urban economy, but neither are likely without one. In this century.…
Why we do this
Here is a great 15 minute look back at the work of Streetsblog and Streetsfilms from New York, that articulates the motivation behind what we do here at Transportblog. However modestly compared to their output. This is a worldwide movement; the profound improvement of lives, one street at a time.…
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